Fragments of a Broken Doll
by Scribbler
Summary: Namine always felt guilty about the Riku Replica, but just because you feel guilty doesn't mean you can save someone. It doesn't mean you shouldn't try, either. Namime/Replica


**Disclaimer****:** Memorably not mine.

**A/N****:** Written for the KH Drabble challenge 'don't get caught'.

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_**Fragments of a Broken Doll**_

© Scribbler, October 2009.

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She hid him where she could, tucking him under memories and pulling blankets of crocheted reminiscence across him so he wouldn't be spotted. He didn't thank her. He couldn't. With every relocation she put him through, he lost a little more of himself, consciousness spreading a little thinner. She wanted to sew it all back together, but couldn't, until finally she pulled back the memory of ice-cream on a hot day to find him curled in a foetal ball, unresponsive as stone. She called his name, tugged at him, but went straight through. The pieces were too broken. There were too many cracks, too many spaces where his vitality had seeped through into the ether. The centre couldn't hold – had been destined not to hold even when she started hiding him – and all she had left were bits of a jigsaw without a box to show you what the picture should look like.

She didn't know why she was trying to keep him. It might've been kinder to let him go. He wasn't even real in the first place, right? But she couldn't. He hadn't deserved anything that happened to him – not being born, not living, and definitely not dying. So she'd crept back after everything was over, gathered what was left, and stored him in the safest place she could think of.

Whenever it looked like he might be discovered, she grabbed the pieces and moved them someplace else. She'd reconstructed these memories so well she knew them better than her own. She knew the places nobody went. She didn't think Sora would erase him, but Sora wasn't in control of his own mind right now, was he? He was working on autopilot, putting all his trust in her, her powers, and her integrity. Clasping the fragments to her like glass from a priceless shattered vase, she tried to live up to Sora's trust while at the same time using him.

She'd always been a user. Larxene was right – she wasn't a god person. Wasn't even a person at all, when it came down to it. Was she trying to become one through her actions? Sora had memories of school lessons where the teacher talked about places that believed you weren't born with a soul, but had to earn it. Perhaps this was just her being a selfish little witch again. But no matter how careful or gentle she was, somehow she still always seemed to have fewer fragments each time she picked them up.

"Please," she murmured now, even though he couldn't hear her. He'd stopped responding to her voice six months into Sora's sleep. He'd stopped moving at four. Stopped speaking at two. Now, nine months into her useless undertaking, he was just a shell of a memory of a fake.

Except that he _wasn't_ fake. He was real. To her, he'd been the realest thing in the whole castle. If souls were gained through suffering, he'd definitely earned his.

Humans could produce babies in nine months. She couldn't even save one person – the one who'd always loved her no matter what. He'd come to her so many times before, innocent and trusting in his belief that she was worth protecting. She was the only thing he ever defied Vexen over. Her own mind threw up memories of his head in her lap, stolen moments of her stroking his hair before Vexen came to spirit him away again.

Before she knew it, she'd tried to pull his head into her lap again, as if it would do some good. He was like smoke. Nothing she did worked. By the time Sora woke up, there would probably be nothing _left_ to find, accidentally or not.

She sensed Sora's subconscious like a shadow moving in a dark room. He was close. Panic gripped her even though it was already too late.

"Please don't go." She gathered the fragments once more and shifted sideways through the reformed memories. Bits of nostalgia and gossamer recollection caught in her hair and trailed behind her like cobwebs as she went deeper into Sora's mind. "Don't leave me now. You swore you'd always be by my side. You said you'd always protect me …"

This time she hid him amidst childhood recollections of the real Riku, hoping Sora's subconscious would just gloss over the slack face and impassive eyes, instead of exorcising them as foreign like she feared.

Naminé couldn't save the Replica. That was beyond her power. But she _would_ keep hiding him until there was nothing left to hide, because fake or not, they'd both had their own emotions, their own dreams, and she wasn't ready to let go of those until she, too, faded away and was forgotten.

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_**Fin.**_

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End file.
